Respected Team Owner Deserves Much Better

Auto Racing

March 07, 1989|By AL PEARCE Staff Writer

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. — The NASCAR season is just two races old and Richmonder Junie Donlavey already feels like he's gone two rounds with Mike Tyson.

"Maybe somebody is trying to tell me something," the long-time stock car team owner said Saturday. "Man, it hasn't been the kind of start our team expected. We've had some hard times before, but nothing like this."

Donlavey has been involved with NASCAR for almost 40 years. He's among the sport's most popular and respected owners, and one of NASCAR's most faithful members. Almost everybody in the garage area pulls for his under-financed, mostly volunteer team to run well.

He deserves better than what's happened to him lately:

When driver Benny Parsons retired last fall, Donlavey also lost his sponsor, Bull's-Eye Barbeque Sauce. He spent much of the winter finding a new driver (rookie Chad Little) and looking for a new sponsor.

With more optimism and good cheer than money, Donlavey and Little went to Daytona Beach last month for Speed Week '89. Things were going fine until Little was the innocent victim of a multi-car crash midway through the Daytona 500.

Still, Donlavey had high hopes for the Feb. 26 Pontiac 400 at the Richmond International Raceway. That race was snowed out and rescheduled for Easter Sunday, March 26, a weekend Donlavey figured to have off.

Last Thursday here at the North Carolina Motor Speedway Donlavey and his young driver stumbled again.

"We had plenty of top-end power from our new (Ford) motor," he said, "but the car wouldn't pull off the corners. It was a new engine, and we knew what was wrong.

"We didn't make the (Goodwrench 500) field Thursday, but we were going to make it Friday. No question about it... we had a different engine, we were ready."

But Friday's day-long rain washed out qualifying for starting positions 21-42. When NASCAR filled the field from Thursday's qualifying runs, Donlavey and Little were left out.

"Still, we thought we'd get a provisional (a special invitation for non-qualifiers)," he said. "NASCAR used to give them early in the year based on the previous year's points. Now, they're based on points through the last race."

That change meant Donlavey and Little would watch the 500 on TV. "We didn't get but a few points at Daytona because of the wreck," Donlavey explained. "And nobody got Richmond points because of the snow. That really hurt us because we figured to run well there.

"So we missed the (Rockingham) race because of a wreck at Daytona that wasn't Chad's fault, the snow at Richmond, then the rain that kept us from making another qualifying run on Friday."

What does Donlavey and his unsponsored Ford team do next? "Oh, we'll keep working hard, then head for Atlanta the middle of next week," he said without hesitation.

"We've been in racing too long to let this sort of thing get us down."